The education maintenance allowance, which pays 16 to 19-year-olds from low-income families up to pound;40 a week to stay in education, has been running in East Ayrshire for three years. It is already “so woven into the fabric of the system that there would be an outcry if it were removed,” says the director of education, John Mulgrew.

He points to figures recently compiled by his department comparing the destinations of East Ayrshire school leavers before and after the allowance was introduced. These show a substantial rise in teenagers going on to further education and a corresponding fall in those entering unskilled training schemes.

“Notice that the big jump occurs in the year after the introduction of the allowance and that the corresponding figures for the whole of Scotland show no change over the same period. I think that’s very significant. My feeling is that EMAs can be credited with most of that effect, which means they are fulfilling their purpose,” he says.

That purpose was to support young people from low-income families to remain in education beyond compulsory schooling and to help them progress to further or higher education. A detailed evaluation of the East Ayrshire pilot was commissioned by the Scottish Executive and published last week. It supports Mr Mulgrew’s conclusions.

The Edinburgh University research team found that EMA, which will be rolled out nationally in 2004, increases participation and retention in post-compulsory education by 9 per cent among young people from low-income families. Because of this, and despite no evidence yet for any increase in attainment, the evaluation concludes “the policy has been a success”.

It is a view widely shared by the young people themselves, for whom up to pound;40 a week is very welcome, opening up possibilities that would not otherwise be available. Some talk about using the money for books or other equipment. Others hesitate in mentioning leisure pursuits, perhaps worried that they might not be thought an acceptable use of their allowance. But participants are not asked to account for their EMA spending and social activities are a legitimate use for part of any young person’s allowance.

One area of concern for some, however, is the formula used to calculate the EMA. The payments now play a big role at Auchinleck Academy, where more than 50 per cent of students in post-compulsory education receive them.

Headteacher Colin MacLean says: “It is based on parents’ earnings and if they make more than pound;25,000 a year the student gets nothing. I think that may be too low a cut-off, so that some youngsters are having to leave school when they don’t want to.

“With the closure of the coal-mines there is now more employment for women in this part of the country than for men. But a lot of it is unskilled work in the retail and service industries. One of my biggest concerns - which EMA is addressing - is the number of girls who could easily go into higher education but have to leave school to take a job behind a counter or in a factory.”

Fifth-year pupil Kerry Crawford says that with the help of a full EMA award she has been able to stay on and study for Highers, with the aim of being the first in her family to go to university. However, she says her closest friend did not qualify for an EMA and has been forced to find a job.

“She is now working in the local hairdresser’s. It’s a shame because she could have got her Highers too,” says Kerry.

Blair Anderson, who is also in the fifth year at Auchinleck Academy and aiming to go to university, receives a minimum EMA of pound;10 a week, but that is not enough to remove his need for part-time work. So he rises early to deliver newspapers. As the rigours of studying for Highers begin to bite, he says, he will be forced to look for work that pays better and is less demanding on study time.

Both teenagers fit the profile of a typical EMA recipient as sketched in the East Ayrshire evaluation study: “young people who are fairly positive about school, who probably want to stay on and are enabled to stay on by the EMA provision ... Their motivation is already quite high, they often have specific career intentions and the EMA works to reinforce these.”

They even see merit in the strictness of the 100 per cent attendance for payment rule, which was introduced only last year, in line with Scottish Executive advice. At the beginning of the pilot East Ayrshire had operated a more flexible system based on cumulative attendance. Kerry says: “Knowing that you can’t miss classes without a good reason helps keep you focused.”

So it is perhaps surprising that the evaluation study was unable to detect any effect of EMAs on pupil attainment. The research team offers some possible reasons, including inaccurate reporting of results by the pupils and under-exploitation of the EMA learning agreement which is drawn up between each school and student, stipulating required attendance and behaviour and attainment targets.

Improvements were anticipated in all these areas but the researchers found that learning agreements have so far focused largely on attendance and as a result “may not be fully exploited as a mechanism for driving up effort and thus improving attainment”.

In the right context, learning agreements can be valuable weapons in the armoury of schools which are battling to improve results, says Mr MacLean.

“For the past six years we have operated policies aimed at raising attainment. All our pupils, even the youngest, now sit down with teachers and agree their targets for the year ahead,” he says.

“Improvements in exam results have been dramatic.

“What this means is that our pupils and staff are familiar with setting attainment targets, and the EMA learning agreement fits in very well with that culture.”

However, Mr MacLean cautions: “What you find is that results rise sharply at first, then begin to flatten off and there’s a key issue that needs to be addressed in trying to push attainment to higher levels. At first we had only a small gap between our boys and girls but, after a few years of setting attainment targets, girls have responded so much better that the gap has become a chasm.”

In September 1999, when the EMA pilot was set up in East Ayrshire, others were begun throughout England. The conclusions that are emerging from their evaluations are similar to those of the research team studying East Ayrshire: namely, positive effects on participation and retention, no evidence yet of an impact on attainment and learning agreements widely under-exploited.

A key difference between the two countries is that EMA in England is seen largely as a means of supporting college students, and various models are being tried, whereas in Scotland it is focused on schools. But EMA is now playing a significant role for further education students in East Ayrshire.

At Kilmarnock College, principal Michael Roebuck says: “We have 10,500 students, 1,500 of whom are full-time and 150 of those are receiving EMA.

“We have a strong social inclusion agenda and are very supportive of the EMA aim of increasing inclusion but the scheme is proving quite difficult administratively, particularly the 100 per cent attendance rule.

“We have four campuses where we offer a huge variety of courses with many different units. Students often change their minds about what they want to take. Trying to enforce 100 per cent attendance in that kind of flexible college setting is not easy,” he says.

“A lecturer can now have three students sitting together taking exactly the same course but one is on EMA, one on a bursary and one on New Deal. All have different allowances and attendance requirements.

“EMA is an excellent idea but what is needed now to make it work really well is a bit of joined-up thinking.”

Complaints concerning details of EMA operation and administration will have to be ironed out before the national roll-out but the principle of supporting less affluent teenagers to remain in education is widely welcomed and the practice already benefits many. Virtually everyone involved with EMA in East Ayrshire - from the director of education, through the heads of schools and colleges, to the students - is extremely positive about the scheme.

However, the consensus is that while EMA is a big step in the right direction, by itself it will not remove inequality of opportunity.

“It is retaining a particular group of school pupils from whom improvements in accredited performance may reasonably be expected,” concludes the evaluation study. “It is unlikely to retain those who are unhappy in school and who have little experience of academic success.

“It is therefore very important that the appropriate choices are offered to young people, that policy initiatives do not compete with one another and that young people are fully informed of the choices open to them.”